TYEHIMBA JESS
http://blog.grdodge.org/2010/07/16/2010 ... imba-jess/
Poetry may not be the first thing that comes to mind when you hear “Music History,” unless you’ve been reading Rita Dove’s Sonata Mulattica, or leadbelly by Tyehimba Jess. Through poems in the voice of Leadbelly and characters in his life (listen to freedom and see martha promise receives leadbelly, 1935) and through letters, quotes, dialogue, song lyrics, and prose pieces (see harris county chain gang and home again), Jess brings the fascinating life of American folk and blues musician, Huddie William Ledbetter (Leadbelly), into verse. Perhaps for him, history is not only a matter of fact, but one of perspective and imagination.
martha promise receives leadbelly, 1935
by Tyehimba Jess
when your man comes home from prison,
when he comes back like the wound
and you are the stitch,
when he comes back with pennies in his pocket
and prayer fresh on his lips,
you got to wash him down first.
you got to have the wildweed and treebark boiled
and calmed, waiting for his skin like a shining baptism
back into what he was before gun barrels and bars
chewed their claim in his hide and spit him
stumbling backwards into screaming sunlight.
you got to scrub loose the jailtime fingersmears
from ashy skin, lather down the cuffmarks
from ankle and wrist, rinse solitary’s stench loose
from his hair, scrape curse and confession
from the welted and the smooth,
the hard and the soft,
the furrowed and the lax.
you got to hold tight that shadrach’s face
between your palms, take crease and lid
and lip and brow and rinse slow with river water,
and when he opens his eyes
you tell him calm and sure
how a woman birthed him
back whole again
-
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Poetry Fridays: 2010 Festival Poets
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Re: Poetry Fridays: 2010 Festival Poets
Galway Kinnell
http://blog.grdodge.org/2010/07/23/poet ... y-kinnell/
In a publishing career that has spanned more than five decades, GALWAY KINNELL has emerged as one of the most distinctive and influential poets of his generation. In all 12 of his collections—including The Book of Nightmares (1971), When One Has Lived a Long Time Alone (1990), Imperfect Thirst (1994) and most recently Strong Is Your Hold (2006)—he gives the clear sense that every word has its own weight, texture, taste and mouth feel—which, as he writes in “Blackberry Eating,” “I squeeze, squinch open, and splurge well.” His poems have a keen appreciation for the value of words for their unique existence as corporeal things, a savoring of the pure “languageness” of language. A lifelong advocate for a strong poetry community, he has taught writing at colleges both abroad and in the U.S. Kinnell has received many honors for his poetry including the Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Award, and has published numerous translations. A former MacArthur Fellow and State Poet of Vermont, he now lives in northern Vermont.
After Making Love We Hear Footsteps
For I can snore like a bullhorn
or play loud music
or sit up talking with any reasonably sober Irishman
and Fergus will only sink deeper
into his dreamless sleep, which goes by all in one flash,
but let there be that heavy breathing
or a stifled come-cry anywhere in the house
and he will wrench himself awake
and make for it on the run - as now, we lie together,
after making love, quiet, touching along the length of our bodies,
familiar touch of the long-married,
and he appears - in his baseball pajamas, it happens,
the neck opening so small
he has to screw them on, which one day may make him wonder
about the mental capacity of baseball players -
and flops down between us and hugs us and snuggles himself to sleep,
his face gleaming with satisfaction at being this very child.
In the half darkness we look at each other
and smile
and touch arms across his little, startling muscled body -
this one whom habit of memory propels to the ground of his making,
sleeper only the mortal sounds can sing awake,
this blessing love gives again into our arms.
Blackberry Eating
I love to go out in late September
among the fat, overripe, icy, black blackberries
to eat blackberries for breakfast,
the stalks very prickly, a penalty
they earn for knowing the black art
of blackberry-making; and as I stand among them
lifting the stalks to my mouth, the ripest berries
fall almost unbidden to my tongue,
as words sometimes do, certain peculiar words
like strengths or squinched,
many-lettered, one-syllabled lumps,
which I squeeze, squinch open, and splurge well
in the silent, startled, icy, black language
of blackberry -- eating in late September.
http://blog.grdodge.org/2010/07/23/poet ... y-kinnell/
In a publishing career that has spanned more than five decades, GALWAY KINNELL has emerged as one of the most distinctive and influential poets of his generation. In all 12 of his collections—including The Book of Nightmares (1971), When One Has Lived a Long Time Alone (1990), Imperfect Thirst (1994) and most recently Strong Is Your Hold (2006)—he gives the clear sense that every word has its own weight, texture, taste and mouth feel—which, as he writes in “Blackberry Eating,” “I squeeze, squinch open, and splurge well.” His poems have a keen appreciation for the value of words for their unique existence as corporeal things, a savoring of the pure “languageness” of language. A lifelong advocate for a strong poetry community, he has taught writing at colleges both abroad and in the U.S. Kinnell has received many honors for his poetry including the Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Award, and has published numerous translations. A former MacArthur Fellow and State Poet of Vermont, he now lives in northern Vermont.
After Making Love We Hear Footsteps
For I can snore like a bullhorn
or play loud music
or sit up talking with any reasonably sober Irishman
and Fergus will only sink deeper
into his dreamless sleep, which goes by all in one flash,
but let there be that heavy breathing
or a stifled come-cry anywhere in the house
and he will wrench himself awake
and make for it on the run - as now, we lie together,
after making love, quiet, touching along the length of our bodies,
familiar touch of the long-married,
and he appears - in his baseball pajamas, it happens,
the neck opening so small
he has to screw them on, which one day may make him wonder
about the mental capacity of baseball players -
and flops down between us and hugs us and snuggles himself to sleep,
his face gleaming with satisfaction at being this very child.
In the half darkness we look at each other
and smile
and touch arms across his little, startling muscled body -
this one whom habit of memory propels to the ground of his making,
sleeper only the mortal sounds can sing awake,
this blessing love gives again into our arms.
Blackberry Eating
I love to go out in late September
among the fat, overripe, icy, black blackberries
to eat blackberries for breakfast,
the stalks very prickly, a penalty
they earn for knowing the black art
of blackberry-making; and as I stand among them
lifting the stalks to my mouth, the ripest berries
fall almost unbidden to my tongue,
as words sometimes do, certain peculiar words
like strengths or squinched,
many-lettered, one-syllabled lumps,
which I squeeze, squinch open, and splurge well
in the silent, startled, icy, black language
of blackberry -- eating in late September.